NEW YORK – David Letterman had his Hugh Grant moment. The question is whether his personal embarrassment will help fuel further professional triumph.
How he deals with the situation at hand on Monday, and the nights ahead, could prove to be a defining chapter in his long TV career. With any luck, it could clinch his recent ratings victory in late-night TV.
The intensely private Letterman surely didn't want to be swept up in this maelstrom, which he dropped on "Late Show" viewers last Thursday with his startling revelations of having sex with women on his staff — a disclosure prompted by an alleged $2 million blackmail threat against him.
But the flood of attention was inevitable.
For a celebrity the caliber of Hugh Grant, publicity — including speculation of career suicide — was certainly unavoidable 14 years ago, when he was arrested with a prostitute on Hollywood's Sunset Strip. Very embarrassing. But then he retreated to NBC's "The Tonight Show" for image rehab.
Host Jay Leno wasted no time before asking his instant classic of a question: "What the hell were you thinking?!"
Grant's appearance vaulted ratings runner-up "Tonight" past Letterman's CBS "Late Show," a leadership position Leno held through his retirement from late night earlier this year.
Since then, Letterman has reclaimed a ratings edge over new "Tonight" host Conan O'Brien.
And now, Dave may have truly sealed the deal. With his masterful monologue last Thursday, he took control of a dicey situation. He promised his audience "a little story" and delivered in spades. He acknowledged his own past "creepy" behavior. He reminded everyone that he's a guy "motivated by nothing but guilt."
Seated at his desk, he single-handedly gave a TV performance to equal the Jay-and-Hugh moment. Implicit in everything Dave said about his own behavior was the unspoken question: "What was I thinking?"
It could be that Letterman's carefully calibrated act of self-disclosure has put him in the best spot possible to weather the situation — and even to milk it. Beloved by viewers and critics for decades, he has abruptly freshened the vintage David Letterman brand.
A humorist who mocks the world while holding it at arm's length, Letterman has demonstrated he still has the ability to surprise even fans who thought they knew him thoroughly.
And he has everybody talking.
Consider the women of ABC's "The View" on Monday.
Joy Behar said Letterman "jumped the gun. Politicians should take a page from his book. He was smart, PR-wise."
Fellow co-host Sherri Shepherd called Dave "a standup guy."
But guest co-host Lisa Ling declared, "When you're the boss, you should keep your thing in your pants."
Then Shepherd suggested that maybe his workplace sex partner "really liked him."

"Come on," Ling scoffed.

And on it went.

Most of the audience members waiting to enter the Ed Sullivan Theater for Monday's "Late Show" taping were excited about being there and not so troubled by Letterman's personal life.

"He did a really classy job of announcing it to everyone," said Keely Ahearn, who came from Minneapolis with her friend Adam Melchert. "I don't think he should have to say that much about it."

Melchert said he understood that such attention is part of being in the spotlight, but said, ultimately, "it's his business. I didn't ever watch the show because he was a moral compass for me."

Meanwhile, a legendary late-night host has nothing but praise for Letterman's skill at crisis management.

"To me, it seems Dave Letterman's handling of this is impeccable," Dick Cavett said in an e-mail. "Brave, direct, and — dare I say it? — manly. He has set a real example here of exactly how to behave when assaulted in such a sleazy operation."

It isn't the first time Dave has shown finesse in managing a firestorm.

In June, he had a run-in with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin over jokes made at the expense of her teenage daughter. He emerged from a tumultuous few days of protests and demands for his dismissal with a ratings jolt. And thanks to the dumb-luck timing of the flap, he also handily upstaged his much-hyped NBC rival just as O'Brien was taking over as "Tonight" host.

In another of his memorable TV performances, Letterman apologized to Palin and her family. But he has never stopped making jokes at Palin's expense.

To judge from last week's tour-de-force confessional ("I know what you're saying: 'I'll be darned, Dave had sex'"), Letterman will now be making more jokes at his own expense.

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Associated Press writer Jake Coyle contributed to this report.

LONDON (Reuters) –
Forget all the pizza and doughnuts -- the British government wants fans of "The Simpsons" to ditch junk food and eat more healthily.

The Department of Health is spending 640,000 pounds ($1 million) to sponsor episodes of the long-running U.S. cartoon series broadcast on Channel 4, as part of its Change4Life campaign.

Before the start of the sponsored shows, cartoon characters pretending to be the members of the dysfunctional animated family are shown sitting on a sofa tucking into ice cream and chips which then morph into more healthy alternatives.

The government hopes that viewers will realize they should follow that behavior, and not the beer-swilling, doughnut-guzzling diet of Homer Simpson and his family.

Public Health minister Gillian Merron said the aim was to produce new and innovative ways to reach the target audience..

"The Simpsons are a much-loved, close-knit family facing some of the everyday challenges that modern day families go through," she said in a statement.

"Whilst they certainly make some questionable choices about how they go about things, they provide a popular and engaging way to get the message to real-life families about simple ways of improving their diet and activity for a healthier lifestyle."

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Steve Addison)

ALBERTVILLE, Ala. – An Alabama woman has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child after police say she let her daughter ride in a cardboard box on top of their van. Albertville Police spokesman Sgt. Jamie Smith said the 37-year-old woman was arrested Sunday after police received a call about a minivan on a state highway with a child riding on top.
Smith said the woman told police the box was too big to go inside the van, and that her daughter was inside the box to hold it down.
Smith said the mother told officers it was safe because she had the box secured to the van with a clothes hanger.
The 13-year-old daughter wasn't harmed and was turned over to a relative. A jail worker said the mother was out on bond Monday.
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Information from: The Huntsville Times, http://www.al.com/hsvtimes/hsv.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
The White House on Monday ruled out any consideration of a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama's sweeping strategy review of the increasingly unpopular war there.

"We are not leaving Afghanistan. This discussion is about next steps forward and the president has some momentous decisions to make," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a television program taped at George Washington University that will be aired by CNN on Tuesday.

Gates said the Afghan and Pakistani governments should not be "nervous" about the U.S. review as Obama prepared to brief congressional leaders and to convene his war council again this week on how to deal with the deteriorating security situation.

"I don't think we have the option to leave," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. "That's quite clear."

Obama faces pivotal decisions in the coming weeks after the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, presented a dire assessment of the eight-year-old war effort.

Earlier, Gates urged military advisers to speak "candidly but privately" but defended McChrystal, who has been criticized for appearing to lobby in public for his position that more troops need to be sent to Afghanistan.

"Stan McChrystal is exactly the right person to be the commander in Afghanistan right now," Gates said. "I have every confidence that, no matter what decision the president makes, Stan McChrystal will implement it as effectively as possible."

The debate within the Obama administration is now over whether to send thousands more U.S. troops, as McChrystal has requested, or scale back the U.S. mission and focus on striking al Qaeda cells, an idea backed by Vice President Joe Biden.

'OUR INABILITY'

Gates suggested that the failure of the United States and its allies to put more troops into Afghanistan in earlier years -- a period when former U.S. President George W. Bush invaded Iraq -- had given the Taliban an edge in Afghanistan.

"The reality is that because of our inability, and the inability, frankly, of our allies, (to put) enough troops into Afghanistan, the Taliban do have the momentum right now, it seems," Gates said, although he declined to discuss what options Obama may be considering.

As the strategy debate in Washington gathered steam, Afghan election authorities began a recount on Monday in the disputed presidential election held in August.

Allegations of fraud in what Gates called the "flawed" election are among the reasons U.S. officials have cited for launching the review of policy toward Afghanistan.

With U.S. casualties on the rise, American public opinion has turned increasingly against what Obama's aides once hailed as the "good war," in contrast to the unpopular war in Iraq that occupied the focus of Bush.

There also have been increasing calls from the anti-war left and foreign policy critics for a U.S. pullout. Dozens of protesters gathered outside the White House on Monday, and a few were arrested when they chained themselves to the gates.

Seeking to shore up support, Obama invited senior Democratic and Republican lawmakers to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the future course of the war. He is due to meet his national security team on Wednesday and Friday.

The Obama administration already has almost doubled the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan this year to 62,000 to contend with the worst violence since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban rulers in 2001. The U.S. invasion was launched in the weeks after the September 11 attacks carried out by al Qaeda, which had been given a haven in Afghanistan by the Taliban.

McChrystal has warned in a confidential assessment that the war effort would end in failure without additional troops and changes in strategy.

But signing off on the 30,000 to 40,000 troop increase that McChrystal is said to have requested would be politically risky for Obama due to unease within his own Democratic Party and fatigue among the American public after eight years of war in Afghanistan and six in Iraq.

U.S. forces in Afghanistan suffered their worst losses in more than a year when fighters stormed remote outposts near the Pakistan border over the weekend. Eight American soldiers were killed on Saturday after tribal militia stormed two combat outposts in remote Nuristan province in eastern Afghanistan.

(Additional reporting by Peter Graff and Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul and Phil Stewart and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)